Assistant Professor of Physics Digesh Raut served as chair of the organizing committee for the BCVSPIN conference: Particle Physics and Cosmology in the Himalayas, held from Dec. 9-13, 2024, in Kathmandu, Nepal. BCVSPIN (an acronym for Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Nepal) was initiated in the late 1980s by Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam and Professors Jogesh Pati, Yu Lu and Qaisar Shafi. It aims to support early-career scientists from South/Southeast Asia by providing opportunities to learn from and network with fellow scientists on particle physics and cosmology.
As chair, Raut led the conference, which featured 70 talks from experts, early-career scientists and major experimental collaborations. Topics included collider physics, gravitational waves, dark matter, neutrinos, particle astrophysics, physics beyond the Standard Model and machine learning. This year's program also featured a 3-day masterclass on particle physics and machine learning and a public talk by Nobel Laureate Professor Takaaki Kajita on discovery of neutrino oscillations.
The return of the BCVSPIN conference to Nepal after more than 30 years was in part due to Raut’s work as a post-doctoral researcher in Professor Qaisar Shafi’s research group at the University of Delaware. In 2022, Raut coordinated an online school, followed by a successful 10-day in-person workshop in 2023, hosting 10 lecturers and 64 master's and early PhD students from South/Southeast Asia.
Raut’s travel for the 2024 BCVSPIN conference was supported by the SMCM Physics Foundation. Please visit the official BCVSPIN website for more information at https://www.bcvspin.org.
Photo caption: SMCM Assistant Professor of Physics Digesh Raut (row one, second from left) served as chair of the organizing committee for the BCVSPIN conference: Particle Physics and Cosmology in the Himalayas, held from Dec. 9-13, 2024, in Kathmandu, Nepal.
